Session Notes: The Marble Arch, Manchester, 01.01.12

There we were, sitting in the Marble Arch on Christmas Eve, supping our halves of Stouter Port Stout when Jo spotted a posted adversing the MA’s New Year’s Day opening times. Which gave her an idea…

Eight days later we were back again, for dinner (venison loin for Jo, pheasant for me, both delicious) and our first session of 2012, which covered the following bases:

Moor Amoor Porter 4.5% ABV
A rather delicious glassful of mocha sundae & toasted hazelnut flavors with a lingering dry finish. Great mouth-feel, too. Very pleasant indeed.

Marble Trial Lagonda No. 6 (IPA) 6% ABV
I’m guessing the Marble folks are testing out a few alternate hop-combinations for their Lagonda IPA? No.6 is blessed with bountiful big IPA flavors: predominantly a grapefruit dry-sourness, with a hint of honey keeping it all in check. Well-balanced and easy-drinking but with definite bite.

Marble Draft No.9 (golden ale) 3.9% ABV
Another example of the sort of sharp, hoppy session beers that Marble do so well. Pale gold in colour, hop-led, with dry citrus notes throughout. Similar to Pint, but with more of a biscuit malt character.

Marble Stouter Stout 4.7% ABV
A classic on the Marble list and with good reason. Stouter Stout is a classic bone-dry black beer with an almost charcoal-like character, off-set by just a hint of dark chocolate. One of the driest, tastiest stouts around.

Dark Star Festival (bitter) 5.0% ABV
Jo’s a huge fan of Dark Star Original and was happy to re-visit a half of its label-mate Festival: as last time, it was quite savoury and dry, with a spicy-nuttiness leading the flavour-charge. Very tasty, very drinkable indeed.

Marble Pint (golden ale) 3.9% ABV
The aforementioned king of the Marble session beers – indeed, one of the best session beers around, IMHO, right up there with the likes of Fyne Avalanche or Hawkshead Lakeland Gold – Pint was on top form on Sunday: light, refreshing, hoppy-sharp but with a softer, fruitier finish than some of Marble’s other session brews. Lovely stuff.

Marble Chocolate (stout/mild) 5.5% ABV
Marble’s show-stopping stout/mild (they describe it in their beer menu as possessing characteristics of both rather than being a blend of the two) was as tasty and more-ish as ever. Rich, malty, packed with just the selection-box array of flavors that you’d expect from the name. Not too bitter, not too sweet, a well-balanced, full-flavoured dark winter warmer. Rather fabulous.

How’s that for a cracking start to the year? Not to mention the birth of a new annual tradition, with any luck.

Brewery: Marble
Location: Manchester
Style: Strong Pale Ale / Strong Ruby Mild
ABV: 5.7% / 6.0%
Version: Draught
Source: Marble Arch, Manchester

It’s always a pleasure to walk up to the bar at the Marble Arch (actually, I could stop this sentence right there) and find they’ve come up with a new draught ale. So it was double the joy on Saturday evening when I spotted not one but two new brews to sample. It was the start of the evening though, so first things first: a couple of pints of Marble Pint, please. It’s one of those quintessentially British beers that manages to pack a flavour-punch despite weighing in at only 3.9% ABV, so it makes for an ideal session starter. And – ah, what the heck- a sample-sized half each of Beer 57 and Brew 1691 Mild.

Marble Beer 57 turned out to be a strong (5.7% ABV), full-flavoured pale ale. Not as dry and hoppy as the Pint and slightly darker in colour, it’s much closer to Marble Dobber in character, just slightly sweeter. Very pleasant, very palatable, very drinkable. Goes great with food as well (the pan-roast chicken was especially good on Saturday). I’m just not sure how likely it is to become a Marble regular, given that it is so Dobber-like, so if you’re interested in sampling this one, it might be worth seeking out now, in case it’s not around for long.

Now then, Marble Brew 1691 Mild. A strong (6t.0% ABV) ruby beer that you really should try if you get the chance. Jo and I were both completely blown away. It’s a quite lovely shade of burnt umber (my pic was taken at the end of the night so probably doesn’t do it justice) with a spicy-sweet aroma. Jo hit the nail on the head when she said it’s like eating a tiramisu from the top-down: the first flavour that hits you is a rich, creamy chocolatey digestive-biscuit, with a light dryness to follow, finally giving way to a lingering after-taste of sweetish sherry or semisecco marsala wine. Absolutely gorgeous stuff; definitely one of the tastiest beers I’ve sampled all year. If strong, sweet beers are to your taste then you should definitely seek it out.

Jo suggested we have dinner and a couple of pints at the Marble Arch on Saturday and it didn’t take much to get me to agree (she had me at ‘dinner’, to be honest, ‘pints’ and ‘Marble Arch’ were icing on the cake). We were hoping to get there early enough to bump into MyBreweryTap.com‘s Richard Burhouse (@MyBreweryTap) and Rob Derbyshire (@BGRTRob) of Hopzine.com fame, but alas they got there earlier than we did and had already supped their fill and moved on before we’d managed to get into town.

So instead we ended up chatting to half a dozen complete strangers over the course of the evening (topics of conversation ranging from bondage trousers and Stiff Little Fingers, to the relative acoustic merits of the Bridgewater Hall and the Lowry, via the best way to get to the Palace Theatre by car whilst avoiding the gas-main works that have buggered up the city centre for months) and had a bloody good time doing so.

There was ale involved, of course. And oh, my word, what ale there was…

On arrival, I headed for the bar to get Jo her customary half of Marble Stouter Stout and made a b-line for the Thornbridge Raven, which Rob D had mentioned was on earlier in the day. As it weighs in at 6% ABV I thought I’d just go for a half to start with, so I got myself a pint of Marble Pint at the same time, to ease myself in. But Jo finished up her stout and sent me back to the bar for another (along with our food order) and the Raven was so damn good – a dark, smoky, delicious black IPA with a lingering hop-bite – that I couldn’t resist a second. And that pretty much set the tone for the session…

Our food arrived just as we’d both gotten a pint of Marble Chocolate in and we feasted on char-grilled belly pork and black pudding (actually, the best damn black pudding I’ve ever tasted) with duck’s egg for starters, followed by sea bass served with creamed crab meat and spinach for Jo and turbot poached in red wine on creamed polenta with salsify sticks for me, and some lightly steamed greens on the side. Fantastic food, as always in the Marble Arch – we’ve eaten there a few times now and have never been anything less than blown away by whatever we’ve ordered – and it all went extremely well with the rich, tasty Marble Chocolate. Perhaps a dark ale or stout might not the obvious choice for a with-food beer, but the bitter-sweetness of the chocolate and roasted malts were very complimentary indeed to the satisfyingly meaty, beautifully cooked fish dishes.

After dinner we ordered dessert: another Marble Chocolate for Jo, whilst I decided to try a pint of Marble Brew 14. This one was a completely new to me (although apparently it went down rather well on the first #twissup pub crawl / blogger outing in Sheffield back in January. Brew 14 turned out to be a feisty session bitter that was all about the bitter oranges and big hops with a long, dry finish. Very, very good indeed and one I’d definitely have again.

At this point, Jo and I were thinking about winding down and heading home, so I opted for a quick half of Marble Dobber for the road. But of course, one half of Dobber is never enough and as I was heading back to the bar for another top-up, I spotted a new pump clip nestled among the array of Marbles: Thornbridge St Petersburg! I’ve been trying to track down and try this 7.7% ABV Imperial Stout for a while now, so this was just too good an opportunity to miss. And it was delicious: rich, smoky malt, chocolate and coffee, blended to perfection. A top-up of that one was absolutely compulsory, it would have been the very height of rudeness not to.

That really did finish the evening off for us and we weaved our way out the door to find a tram and head home for a nice cup of tea and a kip. Lovely, lovely evening and a fuzzy, fuzzy head the next day, but absolutely, totally worth it. I tell you what, it’s a good job we don’t live just round the corner from the Marble Arch, we’d never be out of the place.

A good friend of mine came up from London on Saturday, so I thought I’d take him to the best pub in Manchester: the Marble Arch.

If you’re from round these parts then you might scoff at my casual handing out of the ‘best pub…’ accolade; I’m sure you’ll have your own favourite and I’m not intending to denigrate any of our city’s other very fine watering holes. But honestly, if there is a better pub than the Marble Arch around these parts then I haven’t found it yet (and please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments if you think you might have).

My friend (also called Darren) and I got there around four in the afternoon, and a serendipitous table vacancy opened up just as we were arriving, so we settled ourselves in for a few pints and a good catch-up. I went up to the bar and came back with two pints of golden, crystal-clear Marble Pint, one of the tastiest, freshest pale ales you’re ever likely to meet. We started talking – setting the world to rights, as you do – and soon finished off the pint of Pint and decided to move on to Marble J.P. Best; a classic best-bitter that’s not quite as hoppy as the Pint, slightly stronger on the malt and still extremely refreshing. It definitely went down a treat.

T’other Darren is a big Belgian beer fan and haunts a few of London’s Belgian brasseries when he can, so he perused the Marble’s beer menu with an expert eye, picking out a beer he’d heard of but not yet encountered down south. I forget the name now, as they were unfortunately out of stock. Instead, my eye was caught by the Phoenix Thirsty Moon, so we opted for a couple of those instead. Again, it was another quite delicious bitter, but in this one the malt had been turned up a noticeable notch; it was rich, sweet and pleasantly warming.

By now we were feeling distinctly sociable – chatting to the folks on the next table about the demonstrations in the city centre – and we decided that before Jo joined us and we ordered food, we’d have one more go at the Belgian section of the menu. Darren picked out a St Feuillien Tripel and it turned out to be a delicious and extremely drinkable golden Belgian with very rich malt flavours that weren’t at all over-powered by its 8.5% abv.

Jo arrived mid-way through our goblets and we quickly ordered food (Cornish gurnard for Jo, venison for me and the Marble burger and chips for Darren – all absolutely delicious) and then we ordered another round. The time had come for a stout and so we opted for the Marble Chocolate; a rich, warming, dark-cocoa laced beer with a great body and a gorgeous mouth-feel. It’s dangerously more-ish, too at 5.5% abv. Beautiful.

By this point Darren was declaring himself full and happy, but I’d seen one more beer I really wanted to try. Having enjoyed Acorn’s Old Moor Porter recently, I just had to have a drop of their Gorlovka Imperial Stout. It was quite different to the Marble Chocolate, with a much more pronounced coffee and liquorice flavour, but once again it was dangerously drinkable, even at 6% abv. Probably a good job I just had a half, all things considered.

As we departed the Marble Arch I cast a longing over-the-shoulder glance at the Marble Dobber pump, but I’d sampled its ample delights before and – even though it had taken the top prize the Manchester Beer Festival the day before – I knew our paths would cross again, so I was content to let it lie.

The evening wasn’t quite over yet. We headed back to our place and I cracked open one of my precious stash of BrewDog Tokyo and poured it (ever so responsibly) into two glasses. Darren made all the right appreciative noises about this truly terrific beer and then we finished off with a wee dram of cask strength Edradour, just to send us nicely on our way.

The next morning, we (I say ‘we’, I mean ‘Jo’ – I was in no fit state) drove Darren back to Piccadilly station (this time sans riot police thronging the streets), chatting about the previous evening’s beers on the way. Darren’s favourite had been the Phoenix Thirsty Moon. Mine (Tokyo aside) was probably honours even between the Marble Pint, the Thirsty Moon and the Marble Chocolate, although frankly, they were all rather excellent and I wouldn’t hesitate to re-visit any of them.

So, there you go. A pretty much perfect session at the best pub in Manchester? In my opinion, yes. Can’t wait to get back to the Marble Arch for another.

After the sushi yesterday evening Jo and I headed up to one of our very favourite watering-holes – and one of the very best in Manchester – the Marble Arch. Following a recent tip on Tandleman’s beer blog I was keen to try a couple of their lighter ales and my luck was in: the two I had in mind – Pint and Summer – were both available on tap.

I started with the Marble Pint which, at 3.9%, seemed like an ideal session starter. It poured a pale straw-gold colour and had a sharp, hoppy aroma, with a strong hoppiness carrying through to the flavour. There was a fresh, citrus-tang to the after-taste and all in all it was extremely drinkable and most pleasant indeed. Could have happily stayed on that one for a good while longer, but with a total of ten different ale pumps to choose from at the Marble Arch, the urge to experiment was too strong.

For the next pint I opted for Marble Dobber, a 5.9% hop-monster with a rich, hop-fruit flavour and a huge pink grapefruit after-taste. There was a slight sourness to it, although that mellowed over the course of the pint, and all-in-all it was absolutely delicious. Recommended if you’ve got a taste for stronger ales with a big character and plenty of bite. Absolutely delicious, but not one you could stay on all night. Not if you wanted to remember how to walk at home-time.

Time for one more before we headed off and I decided to go for the Marble Summer (another of Tandleman’s recommendations). This one was another light, pleasant pale ale, once again fresh and hoppy. It was quite similar to Pint, but Summer had a dry, biscuity finish rather than the citrusy zing of Pint. Once again, another highly drinkable session beer that I’d be extremely happy to sup all night.

Three very good beers indeed. And I’m sure if I’d tried the Marble JP Best, which was also on offer (iirc) I’d have been equally impressed. Meanwhile, Jo was drinking Marble Stout (smooth, mocha-flavoured, hints of vanilla, quite delicious) and Pictish Dark (stronger coffee notes, also very tasty). Both fine beers as well, good stuff all round.